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Analyzing and Interpreting Ethnographic Data (Ethnographer's Toolkit)

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Analyzing & Interpreting Ethnographic Data. By Margaret D. LeCompte and Jean J. Schensul. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 1999. Pp. xviii + 243 including index. Paperback. [Vol. 5 of the Ethnographer's Toolkit, ed. By Jean J. Schensul and Margaret D. LeComte.]

Reviewed by: Adam Baker
University of Arizona

This book, the fifth in the seven-volume Ethnographer's Toolkit series, discusses the analysis and interpretation of ethnographic data. LeCompte and Schensul give a comprehensive treatment to the topic, beginning with the initial collection of the data, and culminating with the presentation of the research findings to outside members.

The volume is systematic in its presentation, as the chapters progress from data collection, to storage, to codification of the data, to determination of patterns, to creation of a structural model, and finally applying the research to the situation, through interpretation and presentation. Codification is defined and discussed in detail, explaining how several different ethnographers have done this. Thus the reader learns a variety of strategies for understanding the data collected. Pleasantly surprising in particular is the presence of a variety of possible codification strategies. There is also a rather in-depth look at dealing with bivariate and multivariate situations, which will undoubtedly arise when performing social research.

A weakness in the work, from this reviewer's perspective, is an overemphasis on data from urban settings, and specifically with studies of troubled youth. What ought be a series devoted to the entire spectrum of ethnography is sadly lacking in discussion of coding and interpreting non-Western cultures. While the focused topic will be valuable to those seeking to evaluate social ills and the programs that seek to heal them, the typical anthropology student will find herself wondering how the processes of codification, patterning, and structure-building will apply to cultures operating under alien worldviews.

This was the third installment of the "ETHNOGRAPHER'S TOOLKIT" series I have suffered through (against my will, to be sure), and it was nearly enough to make me give up on being a social scientist altogther. Actually, this is true for the whole series, or at least Volumes 1,2, and 5 which I've read. The entire span of books takes a homogenized, cookie-cutter approach that managed almost completely to suck the life out of the practice of anthropology for me.

Could the presentation of issues be any drier? Could the ethnographic project have been made any more unappealing? Perhaps, but I doubt it. If you're looking for bland, facile discussions of key topics, pussyfooting around the hard issues, and ignoring useful lessons from great ethnography while simultaneously flooding the text with "insights" from the authors' barely relevant research (if I have to read about their study of that confounded Arts Focus program in the public schools ONE MORE TIME...), then this is for you. As for me, I'm fed up.

Suffice to say, I do not recomment this book or any other part of the series; for those of you in search of a methods textbook, well.... I am tempted to conclude that field methods are best learned in the field, not from even the most well-intentioned of manuals. Let alone hack work like this.